


Phoenix

by lilaclily00



Series: Danny/Valerie Roleswap!AU [1]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: AU, D/V Roleswap!AU, Danny/Valerie Roleswap!AU, Gen, don't think this counts as character death? let me know, roleswap!Au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-11-27 22:26:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18199823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilaclily00/pseuds/lilaclily00
Summary: Nothing good could come out of sneaking into Danny’s basement.





	Phoenix

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!
> 
> This is me crossposting from Tumblr the first of the D/V roleswap!AU fics. Original link is here: https://lilaclily00.tumblr.com/post/183278276212/phoenix
> 
> Ugh, it feels like I haven't posted in fanfiction sites in absolutely forever... I barely know how to anymore..
> 
> This seems to be less of a thing on AO3 than on FFN, but I can't help myself: On with the story!

“I’m telling you guys, this is just a bad idea,” Valerie said for the bajillionth time as she and her friends trekked to the infamous FentonWorks. She held a few white-and-blue hazmat suits she had borrowed from her dad’s work, and a small anti-ghost weapon prototype he brought home for her once. Star and Kwan seemed cautious as the sign came into view, but they still held an excited gleam in their eyes. Paulina eagerly held a camera.  
  
“If you still think it’s so bad, then why are you still coming with us?” Paulina smiled, knowing exactly what the response would be.  
  
“Because I can’t just abandon you idiots!” She hardly knew anything about ghosts, but she still knew something, more than the rest of them did. It was for that very reason that they wanted her to come along, as well as why she felt obligated to come when she would much rather not. Nothing good could come out of sneaking into Danny’s basement.

Just as Paulina opened her mouth to defend herself, they saw Dash coming down to the sidewalk from the Fentons’ porch to meet them at the end of the block. “Finally! I’ve been waiting for forever!” He carried his backpack on his shoulder; he hadn’t gone back home after his tutoring session with Danny’s sister.  
  
“How long will they be gone?” Kwan asked, huddling into his letterman’s jacket.  
  
Dash began walking back, the rest instinctively following. “Definitely long enough. Jazz said they were visiting a relative or something, and they’d be back at, like, midnight.”  
  
“We’ve got plenty of time!” Star chirped beside Valerie.   
  
Valerie clutched the hazmat suits closer to herself. “There’s still a chance to turn back, no shame,” she tried voicing one more time.  
  
Dash shook his head as they all stepped up to the Fentons’ doorway. “No way, Val. I already picked the lock.” To prove his point, he turned the doorknob and pulled the door, swinging it open easily.  
  
Valerie ignored her friends’ chatter after that as she stared at the doorway. They were actually going to do it. She hated feeling a responsibility to keep them out of trouble. Babysitting wasn’t what she had signed up for. She filed in last and quietly closed the door behind her.

* * *

“I take it it’s this door?” Kwan asked as a bright orange door with caution tape crossing it came into view.  
  
Dash left his backpack at the kitchen table. “Yeah. All kinds of weird stuff happens down there.”  
  
Valerie grunted as she dropped the hazmat suits on the table by him. “Alright, guys, take your pick.”  
  
“Wait, all of us have to wear… that?” Paulina pointed a manicured nail at the suits with disgust.  
  
“Uh, yeah? Why do you think I brought them?”  
  
“I’m pretty sure I’ve seen Fenturd go in without a hazmat suit,” Dash said, crossing his arms.  
  
Valerie crossed her arms back, unimpressed. “Well, he probably stayed far away from all the equipment. If you guys want to actually look at stuff, you’re gonna have to wear it. I do every time I visit my dad’s work.” When her friends still seemed hesitant, she added firmly, “I’m not letting you guys go into their lab without a suit. You wear it or you leave.”  
  
To her surprise, Paulina was the first to reach forward and pick up a suit, holding it so the fabric touched her fingers the least possible. “I’m not getting ghost germs on my clothes,” she reasoned with the barest of blushes as she carefully pulled down its zipper.  
  
One by one, the others picked up white-and-blue suits, leaving her personal one on the table. It washed out, strangely enough, to green when she last tried to clean it. She easily pulled it on over her clothes; with that done, she looked up and choked on a laugh on seeing the rest of her friends. While the suits fit them okay, they all had red faces.  
  
“I need a belt or something. I’m drowning in this!” Paulina pulled at the waist of her suit with despair.  
  
“Here, let me help you get your figure back,” Valerie said, rolling her eyes with a fond smile. She pinned up the back of the suit like for her own. Paulina then returned the favor for Star as Valerie passed out gloves.  
  
“Who wears it the best?” Star joked, pulling a cheesy pose.  
  
“Frankly, we all look terrible.” Valerie wryly grinned, attaching her prototype weapon around her wrist.  
  
“Alright, let’s go!” Dash cheered, squeaking over to the basement door and tossing himself down the staircase.  
  
“Coming!” Paulina grabbed her camera and followed him down, along with the rest of the group.  
  
Once the light was turned on, the teenagers gawked at the chaotic laboratory. Lined up along the sides were tables covered in blank-screened computers, incomplete gadgets, and beakers containing green goop. It was a little disappointing that all the technology seemed to be turned off, but that was to be expected when the residents were going to be away from their house for a while. The air tasted somewhere between stagnant and stale, Clorox, and the barely recognizable scent of ectoplasm. Well, recognizable to Valerie; she doubted the rest of them had ever encountered it.  
  
“This is  _sick_ ,” Kwan said, and the rest numbly nodded in reply.  
  
Dash moved forward, poking at an open notebook at the nearest table, covered in numbers and near-illegible scrawl. “I didn’t think that Fenturd’s crazy parents could really be geniuses, but this is…”  
  
“They’re real professionals,” Valerie admitted, guilty that she hadn’t thought this until now. The Fentons were notoriously… quirky, but that shouldn’t have led to the assumption that they were complete idiots.  
  
After they wandered around for a few minutes, gawking at the different inventions, scientific notebooks, and ectoplasmic stains, Paulina rounded her friends up for a photo.  
  
“This isn’t going to get us in trouble, right?” Kwan voiced as she posed them by the giant hole in the wall marked as a “Ghost Portal”. “No one’s going to see this photo besides us, right?”  
  
“I think it goes without saying, but,” Dash shrugged, pulling at the arms of his hazmat suit, “snitches get stitches.”  
  
“Oh, they’ll need more than stitches if anyone knows this happened,” Valerie muttered darkly beside the boys. This would not go well with her dad, which would suck–nor with Danny and his family, which would suck even more.  
  
“Say cheese!” Star set the timer on the camera, which was sitting precariously on a taller piece of equipment, and ran back over into frame, side-hugging Paulina with a grin. The rest gave smiles of their own with varying enthusiasm and the camera clicked. The group quickly disbanded, Paulina and Star heading straight for the camera to check the picture while the boys turned around to admire the “Ghost Portal”.  
  
Dash peered in, a little too far for Valerie’s comfort. “Hey, Val, what do you think this is supposed to be?”  
  
“Well,” she began, pulling him back by his collar, “the best working theory right now is that ghosts live in a different dimension, so I’m guessing they’re trying to make a door to it.” She remembered seeing notes about a similar project in Axion, but she technically wasn’t supposed to know about it.  
  
“That sounds risky,” Kwan said, staying by the rim, as Dash stepped in.  
  
“Come back here!” Valerie grabbed for the blond again, who then pulled on the hold and dragged her into the metal-cased hole in the wall.  
  
“Lighten up, Val! Everything’s turned off, remember?” Dash directed her to the center.  
  
Valerie was ready to retort when Paulina squealed, loud enough to grab everyone’s attention. “Let’s take pictures in there, too!”  
  
Star grinned. “I like your thinking.” She picked up the camera to prop on a different piece of equipment.  
  
Once again, Valerie groaned. “Guys, I don’t–-”  
  
Time seemed to slow for a second as she watched Star trip on a cable and step on an extension cord, right by where various cables were plugged in. She eeped, and Valerie’s heart dropped to her stomach.  
  
Everybody froze, waiting for something to happen. Nothing seemed to change–-no noises, flashes, or explosions. Seconds passed by before Star finally, hesitantly, lifted up her foot and looked down.  
  
“Um,” she announced shakily, “the little switch is on, but I don’t know if that’s my fault.”  
  
“Thanks for scaring me like that, Star!” Paulina shouted, holding her hand up to her chest.  
  
Star quickly recovered, glaring her best friend down. “Well,  _sorry_ , Paulina, but it’s not like I wanted to!”  
  
“Let’s get out of here,” Valerie whispered to Dash’s back, feeling near to collapse. He numbly nodded, then nodded again and resolutely walked out of the portal, straight to the other two girls, presumably to break up the fight.  
  
Kwan peered in as Valerie carefully stepped over crisscrossing cables, hand brushing the wall for balance. “That was a close one.”  
  
“No kidding!” Valerie said, bitter tone making Kwan wince. She took in a deep breath and softened her voice, focusing on his face. “Sorry, I just had a bad feeling about all of thi–-”  
  
She felt her hand press on something.  
  
She didn’t hear Kwan’s shout as he was blown back, or the rest of her friends’ alarm, over the machine screaming, her own screaming, her entire body screaming. The prototype on her wrist quickly combusted, briefly setting her sleeve on fire on top of radioactive green overcoming her senses and drilling into her cells.  
  
Much too late and much too soon, the portal sparked, and the overwhelming green fizzled out. Valerie was on the ground, twitching, unresponsive. She didn’t look like Valerie anymore.

Then, she slowly rose like a phoenix.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope I gave someone a heart attack with the Dash part.
> 
> (Published on Tumblr March 6, 2019.)


End file.
